Hollywoodland

An
Illusion Review by Joan Ellis

“Hollywoodland” may well be the
sleaziest movie you see this year. Since you can spend the whole two hours
looking for a grain of decency without finding it, you may as well focus on the
fitting symbol that director Alan Coulter has chosen for his movie: the
recurring sight of a very old man about whom we know nothing. His life, it is
clear, is devoted to staying fit. In a tank bikini, he pumps barbells in the
sun on the balcony of the seedy motel that is his home. Deeply tanned and
topped by a mop of greasy yellow/gray hair, it seems he has spent his life
preparing to be a Hollywood success. Now he is still tan, fit and oiled, but he
is also very old. He is a loser without a showcase.

Early Hollywood – right up through the
40s – ran on the studio system where some severely uncouth studio bosses had
their way with women, actors, and movies without fearing retribution. They had
all the power. By 1959, when actor George Reeves died of a bullet to the head,
either self-inflicted or ordered, the specter of television was eating around
the edges of the primacy of the power bosses. Transition was engulfing them
though none of them quite believed anything would change.

George Reeves’s role of the television
Superman was bookended by the popular and respected Superman comic book series
of the 40s and the eventual Christopher Reeve movie that was a sentimental hit
with anyone who loved the mild mannered man of steel. George Reeves’ television
series in between was thought to be rather silly, partly because it was, and
partly because television itself had not yet earned respect as a medium. It was
a novelty. So Goerge Reeves became a joke of sorts – to the entertainment world
and to himself.

Louis Simo (Adrian Brody, badly miscast)
is a failed private eye trying to sort the puzzle of Reeves’ death to get
himself on page one. The movie follows three suspects as Simo sifts the clues,
but ultimately decides not to finger anyone. So without a plot we are left with
the boredom of both a weak story, and an actor – Brody – who is on screen far
too long with little to do or say that stirs our interest. This leaves three
nice (surely a word of diminishment) performances by Ben Affleck as George
Reeves, Diane Lane as Toni Mannix, and the always grand Bob Hoskins as Eddie
Mannix. They do their best with second rate material.

George gives sex and youth to Toni who supports him and buys him a house. Eddie
is the willing provider for his wife. Each of these three, in an especially
individual way, is terrified of the loss that age inevitably brings to Hollywood
actors who have beauty or brawn unaccompanied by brains. Meanwhile, still
pumping iron on the motel balcony, the greasy barbell man is there – the awful
symbol of everything they dread.